It's been an A

Photography took over writing. I miss writing, though. I forget my days and thoughts so easily. I never thought I'd be out of practice writing, but it feels like a stretch to be completely open and honest and free with my words. I have correspondence companions, but, of course, voices change for the audience. I miss my own voice. The one for myself. The one I only hear in my head anymore. Most of the time the kids drown out that voice as well.

It's finally warm. Hot, really. It's supposed to get up to 96 degrees this week. I'd be very content with upper 70's, low 80's. It's 78 degrees in our room right now and it's lovely. My body feels wrapped up in the warmth and humidity. It doesn't ache so much.

We're down to the last few days of May. 2011 is almost halfway over. I always remember that, as a kid, any year past 1999 seemed other worldly. I'll spend the majority of my life in the 2000's.

I've had odd feelings about getting old this year. My age never really bothered me until I turned 27. That was a hard age to handle. I was no longer "mid" 20's, I was "late" 20's. I hate admitting that I'm thirty anything. I can't imagine what it will be like when I hit 40. Beyond that, though, I've developed a fear of getting old that I've never had before. It's not a fear of death, or even, necessarily of my body degenerating, though that's certainly part of it, but getting OLD. Wrinkly. Stooped. Unable to keep up, be attractive or interesting. I really do live in fear of wrinkles. I hate the idea of my skin being thin and dry and sagging. I hate the idea of my hair being thin. I hate the idea of a young mind in an old body. I already feel the disconnect.

The thing that really bothers me, though, is the thought that I wasted my youth. I didn't really take care of my body or appreciate it's form and abilities. Even if I lose all the weight that I want to this year, I'll never have the look that I want because I didn't care enough ten or twenty years ago to make an investment. Not only that, I'm too old to achieve that look anymore. And, even if, by some miracle, I COULD, my actual age will still get in the way. I have to face it. I am a wife. I am a mother. And I am old.

I not a terribly unhappy person, though I am angsty by nature, but these thoughts make me unhappy in a way I never have been before. I don't usually dwell on them. I have plenty of things to keep me busy and interested and distracted, but they creep up on me more often than they used to. More and more I look at my children and realize that soon THEY will be the age that I still wish I was. How will that affect my mothering?

I've been missing writing. I'll warn you - I have no focus right now, but maybe I will after I write some nonsense down.

I'm depressed again. Partially because of the season. I hate winter. I hate cold. I hate snow. I hate dark. Pretty much I hate everything about winter. Part of it is feeling lonely. I miss people. Whether they're dead or alive, the point is, they're not really a part of my life anymore and I miss them. I don't feel very well these days. I'm often in a lot of pain, tired - it's hard to focus through pain. I suppose part of it too is just trying to get back into things after a weekend away and having 'routine' interrupted by the kids being sick and snow days canceling school so we haven't gotten back to 'normal' yet. I'm not really sure how to engage my brain.

Today, for instance, I spent the day either in front of my computer or crashed out on the sofa - either sleeping or just sitting there, holding various assortments of children and staring out the window. There are lots of little projects I could do. Under my kitchen sink needs cleaned out and reorganized. The girl's party favor bags for their classmates need made up, laundry is rapidly getting to a place of NEEDING to be done, I should go through my clothes and make myself feel guilty about all the things I can no longer comfortably wear. There's always exercise. But, I did none of it. I didn't even think about any of it most of the time.

The fireplace in the basement is out of commission, so the basement is pretty much unusable until we get it fixed. It's just way too cold. This has been sort of nice from the point of view of no new messes down there. The kids have spent almost their entire days in the living room, rediscovering toys stashed in the hutch and/or watching TV. I feel pretty confined, though. Like that whole floor of my house is missing and everything is more cramped and claustrophobic than usual.

I haven't even felt like taking and processing pictures. I dreamed, this afternoon, that Bob died in a car crash and I had to come up with a way to make $400 dollars a day to live on. The only thing I could think of was taking pictures and I was frantically trying to come up with 4 clients a day and time leftover to process the pics and time besides that to create backgrounds in my yard and house. I was very stressed by the time I woke up.

I've missed out on church things lately, because of either the kids or I not feeling well or scheduling conflicts, and that always shifts my perspective to the negative. It's really hard to have more than a narrow view when day to day scenery consists of one or two rooms. (However, sometimes I think having one, white, padded cell would be nice.)

I need sun. I need warmth. I need fresh air and freedom. Winter is so bulky and cumbersome. 48 days till the Vernal Equinox. But we're in Pennsylvania, so you have to wait till Summer Solstice for it to really warm up. I really hope that by the time Bob and I go to Virginia Beach in May I'm over this whatever it is and can focus again. It'd be nice if it happened tomorrow.

The Grey Days of Winter

So, it's been a while. A little over four months, to be exact. My endo symptoms have returned. I'm am, once again, in pain daily, sometimes severely. My mind - I'm easily distracted, it's hard to focus, hard to think. I still don't feel quite as cloudy as I used to, but I could see me becoming so since I haven't been getting much rest. Not that I don't sleep. I sleep quite a lot. But my dreams keep me from resting, as does my pain. I wake up multiple times a night. The Plaquinil seems to be working, though. There's a level of stiffness and resistance that isn't there in my body anymore. I don't have to fight as hard to move. I've been able to keep up with the housework a lot better because of this. I hurt at the end of the day, but it's not quite as bad as it had been. I'm pretty sure the specific pain - in my ribs and in my pelvis - is due to a reoccurrence of endo. This sucks because the only option is another surgery. I see my PCP tomorrow, for the first physical I've had in a very long time. I'm hoping he gives me a script for a complete MRI of my torso - ribs through pelvis. This pain can't be coming from nowhere.
Winter is bothering me. I was ok with it (sort of) until the snow and now I'm just done. We have birthdays to look forward to, but, really, that's not enough to stem the tide of depression that comes with gray days and bitter cold. (Add to that the fact that our basement fireplace is unusable at the moment, so the house is colder than usual.) I've entered the period of headaches and exhaustion that will last until the sun warms the earth and life can come back.